


forget the dots now

by ODed_on_jingle_jangle



Category: My Candy Love
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Apologies, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Awkward Conversations, Bullying, Confusion, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drinking, F/F, Gen, MCL Rarepair Week, Minor Injuries, Rescue, Tension, Trauma, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-26 23:35:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19778788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ODed_on_jingle_jangle/pseuds/ODed_on_jingle_jangle
Summary: Chani hardly ever drinks alcohol but tonight she does. Tonight she finds a boy who is everything Yeleen isn’t. Tall as a tower, ginger boy with his orange hair cropped ultra short and freckles smattered all over his powdered doughnut skin.A face full of glittering piercings that would make Yeleen scream.





	forget the dots now

**Author's Note:**

> So back when I was a fetus, I used to play My Candy Love. I stopped playing, but I did like the character designs, especially the female character designs...actually, that's probably why I stopped playing. The girls were more interesting than the boys, but you couldn't date them, lmao. I stopped playing before Priya was introduced but in the sequel game, she is a route, which is awesome! If I had more time in my life, I'd probably play it. 
> 
> Unfortunately, you can't date Chani or Yeleen. But they have great designs, so screw it, I'm writing a fic for a ship of characters who hate each other in a game I don't even play. I read their pages and watched some play-throughs in an attempt to get their voices IC enough to be believable but if they are OOC, I don't really care because I recall the characterization in this game being inconsistent af anyway.
> 
> Edit: So apparently there's actually a pretty active fandom for this game? I happened to write this shortly before their rarepair week dropped, so you know what, I'm participating. Been awhile since I actually participated in fandom, if I got time on my hands I might do the whole hecking week.

Chani goes to the party even though it’s not her scene. She goes because Candy wants her to. Candy’s friend Dakota is in town and going to be there, and he’s got his friends too, and she tells Chani it’s going to be fun. Chani hardly thinks of parties as fun; too loud, too much, too fake. Parties smell like beer and corn chips, and music she doesn’t like pounds so hard she can’t hear herself think.

So maybe Candy isn’t the only reason she goes, maybe she also goes so she can quit thinking for awhile. So that garbage music can boom through the walls and explode between her ears, and push out all the thoughts of Yeleen that keep pissing her off. They usually go a lot like this: _She pushes a tendril of textured curls out of Yeleen’s face and softly cups her palm to her cheek, watches hard eyes soften as she presses a kiss to the corner of Yeleen’s lips, feels a tingle as Yeleen’s hand drifts to her hip and—_

And it’s awful, stupid, stupid-awful thoughts like these that push her to going to a party that’s probably going to be stupid-awful too. It’s not that Chani judges anyone for going to parties, but they just aren’t her thing. That’s one of the key issues here, Chani doesn’t believe in judging people without due cause and Yeleen judges anybody who walks different, or walks different, or looks different. Different like Chani is.

 _“Morticia,”_ she can hear Yeleen taunt in her head, three syllables hissed harshly with contempt.

It’s so stupid. Chani isn’t going to apologize for dressing how she does, for daring to go to Anteros in her preferred attire. This isn’t high school anymore and she isn’t having Yeleen’s petty attitude. Or at least, she didn’t think she was.

Chani’s eyes keep slipping in Yeleen’s direction. Maybe sometimes she watches the sun glint off the gold hoops of Yeleen’s earrings in the quad. Maybe she started drawing her, maybe hates herself a little bit for letting the profile of a bully grace the pages of her sketchbook.

Maybe she started drawing her and doesn’t hate herself at all, because art should be about expressing yourself. Not just about the perfect presentation Yeleen is so overly concerned with and uppity about. Art should be a place where you’re allowed to unleash the things that feel ugly and messy, just as much so as the things that look pretty and neat.

And her attraction to Yeleen is without a doubt, the ugliest, messiest feeling she has. Chani’s libido and her brain simply aren’t on the same page with this one. It’s frustrating. She keeps going back and forth with herself, trying to make sense of these feelings she does not want to have. It’s driving her bonkers.

The party is supposed to be a reprieve from the torture. A torture in itself, maybe, but certainly a lesser one.

Chani wears a top that’s sheer from the collar down to the bodice, then solid black from there, and a high-waisted waterfall skirt with realistically sculpted silver skull buttons. She applies an extra coat of midnight lipstick Yeleen would revile at the very idea of kissing off her.

Dakota whisks Candy away at the party, flanked by another girl by the name of Laeti with neon barrettes like lollipops in her hair. Chani hardly ever drinks alcohol but tonight she does. Tonight she finds a boy who is everything Yeleen isn’t. Tall as a tower, ginger boy with his carrot orange hair cropped ultra short and freckles smattered all over his powdered doughnut skin. A face full of glittering piercings that would make Yeleen scream.

Chani drinks a plastic cup full of warm, sour beer without wrinkling her own pierced nose. He looks her up and down, swipes a studded tongue over his lips like he’s staring at a juicy steak. Hardly classy. Chani almost rethinks her decision, but then he’s asking what kind of music she likes and they have enough taste in common to keep her standing there.

He even knows the singer Jay, and Chani can tell he really knows him— it’s not some kind of front just to impress her. And that’s cool, cause Jay is a little obscure. So she’s into her second cup of beer when he suggests they go outside, get away from the garbage music that’s playing and talk some more about the good stuff.

Even though the blaring garbage music is also what she came for, more or less, she still follows him out. Follows him down the path, until the clinging party scents of beer, corn chip, and bonus marijuana dissipate into the better smells of dew and clover. Talking about music becomes talking about mystics, somehow. Chani isn’t sure quite when the conversation takes a turn.

She’s kind of a mystic too, maybe, she says as much and his lips quirk up. She sees the moon in his eyes and then he’s fanning his fingers so she can read his palm under the starlight. Yeleen would never let Chani read her palm. Yeleen would roll her eyes and scoff at the simple idea of palm reading, for sure.

His heart line is wavy. Many lovers then, but none serious. He’s promiscuous. She notes this with a hint of teasing and this is when he kisses her. Kisses her hard, pushes her up against the wall and fervently smashes his mouth over hers. Crams his tongue in so abruptly, the piercing clacks against her teeth.

She tries to get into it. She wants to be into it. But his shoulders are so wide they block her view of the sidewalk and as her fingers dance down to the clavicle, she finds them antsy for a more narrow set. He plunges into her space and she touches his chest, but her hands are irresistibly disappointed to be pressed to the flat of firm pectorals over the supple softness that would be Yeleen’s mounds.

This isn’t working the way she hoped it would and he’s moving so fast it’s dizzying. One hand already squeezes her breast as the other fumbles for the silver skulls that close her skirt.

“Wait,” Chani gasps against his mouth. “Slow down…”

She’s not sure she wants this anymore. She isn’t sure if she wanted to go all the way to begin with, really.

He pauses. His hands don’t retreat. His fingertips skim the edge of the first skull button, waiting.

“I want to go back to the party,” she decides.

“What?” he huffs, brows raised.

“I want to go back,” Chani repeats, grasping his wrist and tugging his hand off her breast. “I’m sorry, but this isn’t happening tonight.”

In a snap, he goes from incredulous to irate.

“Don’t be a tease,” he seethes.

He moves toward her again and Chani shoves him back.

Her first “no!” is an angry shout.

Her second “no,” is a plea he snuffs out with a hand over her mouth.

Chani struggles as a deluge of icy panic floods beneath her skin. She flails and attempts to bring her knee to his groin, but he drives his weight against her. The thin fabric of her shirt tears against the brick. His broad chest crushes the breath out of her lungs.

He grips the waist of her skirt, muscles in his arms rippling as he forcefully jerks. Silver skulls rain down, clacking with finality against the concrete. Her skirt slips down, the cool night air nipping her thighs. The brick scrapes her back as he gruffly hefts her up.

He’s released her mouth but Chani cannot speak against the painful pressure of his weight pinning her to the wall. Her dangling legs are boxed by his firmly planted ones. She struggles madly to kick him anyway, boots helplessly grazing his shins. The brick bites deeper into her back, her skin stinging as it sunders against the rough texture.

He whips his cock out and Chani’s brain goes blank, possessed by a blind, primal panic. She cannot pull her eyes away, finds her gaze glued to veins pulsating in the hardened member. He seizes her boy shorts in a fist and yanks them down to her knees. Chani throws her head back, squirming to free her arms and gouge her thumbs into his eyes.

But he is thrice her size and she cannot budge against the prison that is his mass.

“Don’t act like you don’t want it,” he scoffs irritably, inconvenienced by Chani’s desperate struggles.

He talks like someone who’s just gotten stuck in a too-long line at the cinema concession stand, while Chani cannot talk at all. She can’t even draw a full breath. Choking as his cock rubs along her thigh, fear devours her insides. Everything Chani is made of recoils from what is about to happen.

He is a heartbeat away from penetration. He is going to split her open under the moon, against this brick, and Chani’s world is never going to be the same. She knows this in the pit of her stomach, sick beyond sick and unable to do a damn thing about it.

“Let her go!” roars a lioness disguised as a girl. “Right now! I already called the cops and I am not afraid to use this!”

Ginger Boy (Chani distantly realizes she doesn’t remember his name, doesn’t recall if he’d even introduced himself) goes rigid. The tip of his cock is so terrifyingly close, she can feel its heat against her entrance. He drops her without a second thought, hastily cramming it back into his jeans as he rapidly retreats.

Chani skins her knees as she lands in a heap, rubbery legs unable to take her weight. Her chest heaves as she gasps for air. Ginger takes off down the path like hot coals burn under his feet. She numbly raises her eyes to Yeleen, standing there with her pepper spray extended in one hand and her phone lit up in the other.

“Are you okay, Chani?”

It’s the first time she’s heard Yeleen call her by her name. Not Morticia, or Elvira, or Bride of Dracula. If everything that just happened didn’t, maybe Chani would be able to enjoy this. Maybe she’d be able to memorize the way her name sounds in Yeleen’s mouth or get flustered with herself for even wanting to.

But as is, it’s nothing more than an absent observation.

“Did you really call the cops?” she hears herself asking.

“No, but I can if you want.” Yeleen comes closer in slow steps, like approaching a skittish animal.

For a moment Chani is just frozen, braced on her skinned knees and palms and aware of being more naked than clothed. The back of her shirt is shredded, her ripped skirt pools around her boots, underwear still yanked down somewhere in between. She rises on her knees and shakily pulls them back up.

“Do you want me to call the cops?” Yeleen asks gently.

“No,” she answers, sounding level, somehow. “I need to get my buttons.”

“What?”

“My buttons,” she repeats, crawling around as her mind locks onto the sudden, urgent goal of retrieving them. “He ripped off my buttons, help me find my buttons!”

“O-Okay,” Yeleen agrees hastily, getting down with her.

Chani searches for silver glints in the dark. Her focus on accomplishing this simple task is like an anchor. It delays the breakdown she doesn’t want to have at all, but especially does not want to have here. Not out in the open or in front of Yeleen, the garbage music from the party barely a block away.

“How many buttons are there?” Yeleen asks.

“Six.”

“I’ve got two so far.”

“I’ve got three, there’s one more. Keep looking.”

“Chani, we should get you—“

“Either keep looking or leave me alone!” Chani demands shrilly.

She rarely raises her voice to anyone. But she seriously needs to find her buttons and maybe it is better if Yeleen leaves. Yeleen, who is mean and calls her childish names. Yeleen who would turn her nose up at skull shaped buttons anyway. Yeleen who she can’t stop thinking about, fantasizing about, Yeleen who kisses like a goddess in her impossibly stupid dreams. Dreams that prompted Chani to pick her would-be rapist out of the crowd in the first place.

Yeleen doesn’t leave like Chani expects her to. She keeps crawling with her, silently searching for the last button.

Chani finds it facedown in a crack in the cement, nestled in weeds growing between. Relieved, she plucks it up. Yeleen gives her the two she’d found. The reunited siblings smile up at Chani with their pewter-carved teeth, a bit scuffed up, but otherwise unharmed. She clutches them tightly to her chest, as though it could herald the apocalypse if they hit the ground again.

Somehow, she still can’t find the strength to stand up and Yeleen crouches across from her. For a moment, it’s like she’s going to put her hand on Chani’s shoulder, but she pulls back and messes with her curls instead.

“Is there anyone I can call for you?”

“I have my phone,” Chani says. “It’s in my skirt pocket.”

The skirt still wrinkled around her ankles, undoubtedly too torn to pull back up. Her phone never fell out though. Chani can tell, she still feels its weight when she crawls and in the brighter patches of moonlight, she can make out its rectangular bulge.

Yeleen nods, plump lips pursing as she gives Chani an uncertain look.

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” she asks next.

“No. He didn’t actually, um— I mean, he almost, but—“ Chani shallows, words sticking in her throat like needles. “He would have. If you didn’t show up when you did.”

Yeleen shifts uncomfortably. “Who was he?”

“I don’t know. I met him tonight at that party.” She nods her head toward the beat of the music she can still hear playing in the distance.

“Since when do you go to parties?” Yeleen arches a brow, taking on a hint of the judgmental tone Chani is more used to.

 _Since you started fucking with my head_ , she thinks bitterly.

“It was a favor for Candy,” she snaps, too shaken up to keep her cool. “Why are you interrogating me when I’m the one who got attacked!?”

“I—I’m not,” Yeleen stammers. “I just want to know what happened.”

“What happened?” Chani echoes. “That guy just tried to rape me, that’s what happened!”

Drawing strength from her ire, Chani hefts herself to her feet. Her shirt immediately slips down her arms and as she scrambles to push it back up, she trips over the skirt. Yeleen springs up like a jack-in-the box and catches her before she can face plant.

Chani just sags into her, limp against the steady band that is Yeleen’s arm around her waist. She inhales her scent, this buttery, slightly honeyed smell. Maybe a hair cream or a lotion of some kind. She forces herself to step back before she can get too attached to the moment, before she can get too comfortable in the offhanded embrace of this person who looks down on her like a insect in the dirt.

Yeleen lets her go as she moves away. Chani vainly tugs up her torn skirt. It slips right back down her hips as Yeleen gapes down at her own palm. She looks freaked out. Maybe she’s scared some of Chani’s weirdness rubbed off on her.

“Your back,” she gasps softly, eyes darting up. “Chani, you’re bleeding.”

“It’s not bad,” she mutters absently, more focused on fiddling with her clothes just to give herself some cover. She doesn’t even have a bra. The top came with its own padded cups, so at the time a bra felt unnecessary.

The skirt won’t stay up but she tucks her skull buttons into its pocket. So few dresses and skirts have decent pockets that can actually hold things. When she ordered this skirt, the decent pockets were one of the things that convinced her to do so, to bite the bullet and pay that ridiculous shipping price.

“Here,” Yeleen says, shrugging off her jacket.

Chani exhales in relief and all but snatches it. She slips her arms into the sleeves and hurries to snap all the buttons closed. It’s a big jacket on Yeleen and Chani is a tad shorter than she is with a slighter build to boot, so it fits almost like a short dress. The hem falls far enough to cover her underwear. Yeleen’s body heat lingers in the fuzzy material of the lining, and Chani tries to insulate herself in it.

“Do you want me to take you home?” Yeleen asks.

Chani steps out of her ripped skirt, bundling it up in her arms and holding it close. Like a timid kid might clutch a stuffed animal in a crowded daycare. Her phone vibrates inside the pocket and she has no desire to see who it is.

“I don’t think so,” she murmurs uncertainly.

She doesn’t want to go back to the party. She doesn’t want to go to the hospital. She doesn’t want to go back to her dorm. There are many things Chani does not want, but in this moment, she hasn’t the faintest clue of what she does.

Yeleen idly fingers at her earring, head tilting sideways like she’s considering something.

“Okay, so sometimes when I need some space or I don’t feel like cleaning up after Candy, I stay at my friend’s apartment. She’s out for the weekend, it’s just me and her hermit crabs. You wanna head back there?”

Chani tries to absorb the information, but her mind is still reeling from what nearly happened. Nearly. That’s the thing, it didn’t, even. But it could have— it was going to. Her chin throbs where he clamped his hand over her mouth and she can still taste the sweat from his palm, the one with the wavy heart line. She didn’t have time to read any more. Maybe if she had, she would’ve seen a danger sign.

“Chani?” Yeleen prompts, sounding more weary than frustrated.

“Your friend won’t be mad?”

Yeleen shakes her head.

“Okay,” Chani agrees.

She doesn’t want to see her roommate tonight. Usually they miss each other anyway, but on the off chance she was there, Chani wouldn’t want to be seen. Or spoken to. In all honesty, she thinks she’d like to curl up in a cozy little coffin and die.

She’s as mortified as she is traumatized. She curses herself for going to the party in first place. Wants to smack herself for talking to this guy just to take her mind off Yeleen.

And the kicker is, he’s probably the only reason she’s face to face with Yeleen right now. He was her attempt to escape Yeleen and all he did was draw them together. Well, no, that’s not right…that’s definitely not _all_ he did…but in any case, Chani’s night out ends with Yeleen. Yeleen’s jacket swathed around her torso and Yeleen’s aroma wafting over her nostrils, and Yeleen looking at her like a person for the first time ever as she taps away on a ride share app.

And on any other night, these would be positive developments in her and Yeleen’s nonexistent relationship. But tonight, when her clothes are ripped and her mouth is sore, and she’s still shaking like a furless baby bat, Chani doesn’t know if it was worth the price.

* * *

The apartment is close by. The price of the driver doesn’t even break into the double digits and Yeleen covers it without complaint. Chani follows after her on autopilot, trying not to be as rattled as she feels. Nothing actually happened, right?

But it’s like something happened. Because Chani can still feel the weight of his chest as it stole the air from hers. He was so much bigger, so much stronger.

She wanted to go for the eyes. It doesn’t take much physical prowess to gouge out an eye. Those squishy, gelatinous bulbs burst easily enough even under a child’s thumb. But you have to have access to your thumbs to do that, access to your arms, and Chani couldn’t get them out from under his immoveable mass no matter how hard she tried. She might as well have been straining against a hippopotamus.

“Hey, Chani?”

Chani glances to Yeleen, deceptively nervous Yeleen with teeth scraping the corner of her lip and index finger skimming the inside of her earring.

“That’s like the tenth time tonight,” Chani murmurs.

“Hm?” Yeleen raises a brow.

“You’re calling me by my name tonight. A lot.”

“Oh…” Yeleen blinks rapidly, as though this is new information.

“I like it better than the things you usually call me,” Chani hums quietly.

Yeleen glances to the flamingo shaped rug on the floor. She exhales and looks up again, fingertip slipping from her earring.

“I’m sorry about before. It was uncalled for me to go off on you like that.” Yeleen folds her arms. “I could blame it on the stress of the new semester or whatever, but that wouldn’t be fair. And it wouldn’t be a real apology.”

“No,” Chani says. “It wouldn’t.”

“So I won’t do that.” Yeleen looks her in the eyes, calm and sincere. “I am sorry I was rude.”

“It’s okay,” Chani accepts earnestly, holding her stare. “So what were you gonna say before we got off track?”

“You wanna go to the bathroom, so we can take a better look at your back?”

That’s the last thing Chani expected her to say. She reflexively hugs Yeleen’s jacket tighter around her, unsure what to say or what to do with her face.

“I know you didn’t think it was bad,” Yeleen continues stiffly, looking rather unsure herself. “It probably isn’t. But I’m thinking we should look at it in the light. Just in case.”

“Okay,” Chani agrees. “You’re probably right…”

“This way.” Yeleen jerks her head down the hall and leads Chani to a bathroom that’s neat, but loud.

Flamingos must be her friend’s favorite bird because the motif persists in here. A ceramic flamingo toothbrush holder grins up at Chani with a beak full of pearly whites. The soap dish features a flamingo in large, cartoonish sunglasses. Pink silhouettes of flamingos on one leg pattern the shower curtain. The plain hand towels on the rack sport a shade of pink close enough to match.

Chani stands with her back to the sink as she unzips Yeleen’s jacket. Yeleen hovers near the toilet, eyes roaming, like she isn’t sure if it’s okay to look yet. Chani shrugs the jacket down to her elbows, wearing it almost like the thin, onyx wrap she’d donned at senior prom. Her shirt slides forward without the jacket to catch it and her back is totally exposed.

She glances over her shoulder to peer at the damage. Red furrows raked into her flesh reflect back at her. Dried blood and dead skin cling to ragged edges of them, a few still sluggishly seep even now. They’re ugly wounds but they aren’t serious, as far as Chani can tell.

Yeleen’s eyes flash in the mirror, growing wide. Chani can’t meet her gaze, but watches the movement of her hands from her peripheral. She gestures toward the rim of the shallow tub, and Chani welcomes the pleasant, if irrelevant thought of how nice her hands are.

She follows their prompting and dutifully sits on the rim of the tub. Yeleen pulls out a first aid kit drums her fingers against it, hesitating.

“Is this okay?” she asks, somehow sounds far less confident now than the lionheart who faced off against GingerBoyAlmostRapistHeWouldn’tFuckingStop—

“Chani?” Yeleen repeats softly, and Chani takes a breath as the way her name sounds in Yeleen’s mouth pulls her back to the present.

“Sure,” she says. “Thank you.”

Yeleen shuts the toilet lid and sets the kit down on the fuzzy fabric of its flamingo printed cover, taking a seat behind Chani. Chani puts in effort to stay here in the present, in this very tight, very pink bathroom with the sound of Yeleen’s neat hands rustling through the first aid kit. She tries to focus on this and not the darker thoughts that threaten to claw their way to the surface like lagoon monsters leering in the depths.

“Sorry if it stings,” Yeleen says so soft, it’s nearly a whisper.

It does sting, when Yeleen presses peroxide sodden gauze to her back. She can feel it fizzing in her wounds and she uses this pain too, to ground herself in the here and now. The sharp, clean scent of the antiseptic fills the air and Chani drinks it in, using it to cleanse the tastes that unwanted tongue spat into her mouth.

“How are you doing?” Yeleen asks. And Chani knows what she means, but it almost sounds like a greeting. Part of the introduction they never had.

“Okay, I guess,” Chani mumbles.

Yeleen’s fingertips are warm. Chani can feel them trembling the slightest bit as she clumsily work the soaked gauze against her skin. Excess moisture squeezes out and rolls cooly down her skin.

“What were you doing there?” Chani asks. “When you saw us?”

“On my way to the same party, I think,” Yeleen replies uncertainly. “Castiel was going to be there…”

“Same one then,” Chani confirms. “I saw him there. Arguing with Nathaniel.”

“Ah.”

Chani wonders if Yeleen wishes she was there instead of here. Chatting it up with Castiel. Letting loose.

“How did you know I was in trouble?” Chani asks. It’s not as if she’d called out. He silenced her no’s and it was dark outside.

“What do you mean?” Yeleen asks warily.

“How did you know it wasn’t consensual?”

There’s a moment of silence. Yeleen tosses the wads of gauze into the wire rubbish bin, pale red with watercolor clouds of Chani’s blood.

“I didn’t,” Yeleen says. “Not for sure. Part of me was hoping you’d tell me to put the mace down, that it was a misunderstanding.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I know.”

Yeleen wipes the stray trickles off her intact skin.

“I guess I should get your knees before I put it away…”

Chani looks over her shoulder and offers Yeleen a weak smile. Something swells in her when Yeleen smiles back.

* * *

Yeleen lets Chani borrow some pajamas.

“Sorry there’s nothing in black,” she teases, an effort that is off and stiff, but an effort nonetheless.

Chani grabs this lavender nightgown simply because it’s the first garment of clothing in reaching distance and she needs to throw something on. She collapses on the mismatched day bed Yeleen assured her she was allowed to sleep on and hugs the big, plush flamingo with the goggly eyes.

“My friend’s cool,” Yeleen reiterates, plopping down beside her. “She doesn’t mind if I have people over, as long as they don’t screw with her stuff or leave a mess.”

“I won’t do any of that.”

“I know,” Yeleen peeks at Chani from the corner of her eye as she picks up the DMP remote. “Wanna Netflix and chill?”

“I don’t mind having something on, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to chill,” Chani admits, suppressing a shudder.

Yeleen opens her mouth to speak, closes it as her gaze darkens.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, hushed.

“Not really, but, uh, could you…stay close to me tonight?”

Yeleen’s hand crawls across the short stretch of floral sheets that separate them. It hovers over Chani’s for a tentative heartbeat and Chani takes the initiative to turn her palm up and welcome its presence. Permission granted, Yeleen takes Chani’s hand and gives it a hearty squeeze. Chani squeezes back and exhaustedly lays her head on Yeleen’s shoulder. Yeleen doesn’t let go of her hand or push her away.

When Chani opens her fingers, Yeleen’s slip through. Their hands intertwine like it’s the most natural thing in the world but Chani knows better than to look too much into it. But the rest of the night plays out as peacefully as possible, all things considered.

And in the morning, when Chani wakes up with a mouthful of pink fuzz in her mouth and the plush flamingo squished under her head, she sees her clothes folded on the nightstand. They've been mended, every silver skull sewn back into place.

**Author's Note:**

> Got the title from a song.


End file.
